Angelo

Sonny held his hands in the air with a look of shock on his face. “Don’t shoot me, Lo. You know me. I didn’t hurt Gia.”

I moved closer to him, my gun still raised and pointed at his head, and repeated my question. “Where the fuck is she, Sonny? You were the last person to see her, and then you disappeared along with her? Talk about a coincidence.”

“I love her, too. You know I do. I would never hurt Gia. You have to believe me.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. You’ve loved Gia for most of our lives and not in a sisterly way.”

Sonny laughed. “Fuck you! Seriously, go fuck yourself. You know what? Go ahead and pull the fucking trigger. Let’s see if you have the balls to do it. I’m your oldest friend, one of the few people you can trust, and you have the nerve to blame me for Gia being taken?”

“You were supposed to watch her. I trusted you with Gia’s life, you stupid fuck. What do you not get about that? Because of you, my fiancée is missing. She could be fucking dead by now.”

He shook his head. “Look, Lo. I had nothing to do with it.”

“Where is she, Sonny?” I yelled so loud my voice echoed off the ceiling.

“I’m going to lower my hands. I’m not reaching for a gun. Don’t shoot me, okay?”

I nodded, and Sonny dropped his arms to his sides and unbuttoned his dirty dress shirt. He dropped it onto the back of a wooden chair in the dining room, giving me a better look at his bruised abdomen. Someone had hit him good, the dark marks covering most of his chest. Where he wasn’t covered in dark tattoos, he had scars and cuts marring his skin.

Sonny turned to face me. “You think you can ditch the gun? I didn’t take her, and I wasn’t in on it. Do I love Gia? Yes, like a hot step-sister I’d love to fuck.”

I laughed at his comment, something I hadn’t done in a long time.

He pointed at me. “A smile? How about that? Would you stop being a stupid prick and drop the gun already? You know I would never touch a hair on her head. I would die for her, too. That’s why you asked me to watch Gia. I fucked-up, I know.”

I set the gun on the coffee table and sat on the couch, pointing at the other side for Sonny to join me. He plopped down on the cushion with a loud groan. Sonny propped his elbow up on the armrest to use it for support.

“Start talking,” I told him, my voice stern.

As much as I wanted to believe Sonny had nothing to do with Gia’s kidnapping, I couldn’t trust anyone. My heart was becoming too black to allow anyone in other than Gia and my mother.

“Everything was fine,” Sonny began, “and then the next minute, I woke up in a dark basement chained to an old radiator that wouldn’t stop leaking.”

“Did you recognize the place?”

He scrunched his nose and shook his head. “Nope. It’s hard to say. The room was so dark the only light I had came in through a small crack in the painted glass.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Like stained glass?”

He shrugged. “Could have been.”

“There’s an old church that closed down years ago. Enzo used it sometimes to torture people.”

“The glass could have been painted that way and not stained. I’m not sure. All I know is the window was big enough to fit a small child through and narrow as fuck. I tried to climb up there a few times and almost ripped off my fingernails.”

I glanced down at Sonny’s hands. His nails were caked in blood and dirt. Although he could have done that himself to lend credibility to his story, I believed him. Worry furrowed his brows, but that was normal given the situation.

“What else do you remember?” I leaned forward on my elbows, locking on to him. “Tell me what happened after the engagement dinner.”

He relaxed against the couch, with his arms folded across his chest, and kicked his foot up on the coffee table. My gun rattled next to the remote from the force.

“I brought Gia home like you told me to do. She changed into her pajamas.”

“What was she wearing?”

“A pink tank top.” He tilted his head to the side to think it over. “Black pants, you know the stretchy kind that makes her ass look good?”

I rolled my eyes at him and sighed. “Uh-huh. Stop talking about my girl like that, or I will pick that gun back up.”

He chuckled. “What? I can’t help it that you have a hot girlfriend.”

“She’s going to be my wife, dick.”

“Whatever. One day, she’ll be a MILF, too.”

I raised my hand to silence him. “Enough out of you, Sammy.”

His mouth opened wide in shock. “What happened to our deal? You know I hate that name.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m not the one violating bro code. Keep talking. About the night you and Gia were taken and not her ass.”

“Yes, Boss.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. He always called me that, but I would never become the boss after my father. I had zero interest in running the organization. If I had my way, I would have left with Gia and never turned back. But I had obligations to my father and brothers. I was a lot of things, and a loyal bastard was one of them.

“Can we continue this conversation in the kitchen?” Sonny asked, getting up from the couch. “I haven’t eaten a solid meal in who knows how many days.” He angled his body to look at me. “How long was I gone?”

“Seven days.” I lifted my gun from the table, tucked it into my waistband, and followed Sonny into the kitchen. “Almost eight.”

“Did anyone call about Gia yet?”

“Nope, I haven’t heard a goddamn thing from anyone.”

“That’s weird, don’t you think? If the person who took her wanted something from you, I would have expected them to come to collect by now.”

“You would think. Gia has nothing to do with any of the shit we have going on with the North Jersey family and Enzo.”

He opened the refrigerator, took out two Cokes, and handed one to me. We cracked the aluminum cans open and took a long sip, staring at each other. I hadn’t taken my eyes off Sonny since he walked into the living room. Sonny had never given me a reason to doubt him. He was always a good friend and soldier in the Morelli army.

“Maybe it’s because you killed Enzo’s son.”

“There are too many reasons. I don’t even know where to start.”

I kicked out a chair at the breakfast bar and sat, while Sonny made himself a sandwich. He removed half the contents of the fridge and dumped them on the counter. Deli meats, cheeses, spreads, and a loaf of Italian bread were picked over in a matter of seconds.

“When was the last time you ate?”

He peeked up from the pile of sandwiches he’d made. “Once a day, someone came in with a bowl of soup. Well, it was more like clear broth, maybe chicken. It had no flavor, but it kept me from gnawing my arm off.”

I sipped my soda and dropped it to the marble island. “I hope whoever has Gia isn’t making her suffer because of the shit I did in the past.”

“We’ll get her back.” Sonny’s voice indicated confidence I was losing by the day. “I’ll help you. I won’t stop until we find her.”

The longer Gia was gone, the more I wondered if the people who took her killed her the night they kidnapped her.

Was I waiting for her body to float in the Delaware River? The thought made me nauseous.

“Why haven’t they called yet? If all of this was to get my attention, they have it. What if Enzo knows I whacked his son? He could have killed Gia as payback.”

“He would have dumped her by now,” Sonny pointed out. “Enzo wouldn’t keep her on ice. He’s not into that kind of shit.”

Sonny was right. Like my father, Enzo favored torture over death. It was hard to get something out of someone when they were no longer breathing. On the other hand, I preferred to get it over with. If someone ended up on my shit list, it was with good reason. I hated baggage. The dead couldn’t retaliate, they couldn’t come back years later for revenge.

“Were you in there with anyone else?”

He shook his head with his mouth full of food. “Nah. Just me.” Sonny licked mustard from the corner of his lips and shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth, chomping louder with each bite. “A guy came in with food and water once a day. I never got a good look at him. Dark hair, tan skin, and black clothes were all I noticed. He could have been anyone. But he was well dressed. Probably connected.”

“How about scars, tats, anything that stuck out about him?”

He slurped down the rest of his soda. “I wish. He opened the door, slid the tray right next to it, and closed it before I could even get up. We never spoke a word. It was a basement—damp, dark, full of spiders and mold. There was nothing out of the ordinary. I couldn’t hear anything outside. No cars, people, not a sound.”

“The church Enzo used was out of the suburbs, hidden in the woods. Do you remember it?”

Sonny stuffed another sandwich into his mouth. “Kinda. It’s been a long time.”

With each second that passed, Sonny filled his empty stomach, his face slowly returning to normal. He was beginning to look like my oldest friend, apart from the blood and dirt all over his body.

“How did they take you?” I pounded the rest of the soda and crushed it in my hand. “Walk me through that night.”

Sonny dropped his food to the plate and rubbed his hands together. “Gia asked me to make her some popcorn and grab her a soda. We were going to watch the new Saw movie on Pay-Per-View.”

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “She loves scary movies.”

He nodded. “So, I went downstairs to the kitchen. I was waiting for the popcorn to finish up in the microwave, with my back turned away from the door, when someone came up from behind me and jammed a needle in my neck. I didn’t even have time to fight them off before I was out like a light. They must’ve shot me up with horse tranquilizers. Whatever it was that shit was strong. I woke up, I don’t know how many hours or days later, still high on that shit. They probably dosed Gia with the same thing.”

The thought of Gia being drugged and thrown into a dirty basement like Sonny made my stomach churn. I wanted to kill whoever was responsible for taking her away from me. Revenge was the only thing I could understand.

“That was it? You were in Gia’s house and then woke up in the basement?”

“Yeah. I wish I had something more useful to help us track her down.”

“How did you get out? How did you get back here?”

“They drugged me again. Instead of a needle, they put something in my water. All I remember was drinking from a bottle of Aquafina, and a few minutes later I was tired as fuck. I passed out by the door to the room and woke up in a back alley a few blocks over from here. They dumped my ass smack dab in a pile of trash bags.”

I laughed. “Maybe they were sending us a message after all. Enzo was taking out the trash.”

Sonny smirked. “Don’t be a dick.”

“If he wanted to send us a message, he would have dumped you somewhere more significant like the parking lot at Scores or even out front of our house. But he left you somewhere he knew no one would find you. He must’ve figured you would wake up and walk home from there.”

“Maybe he thought you would finish me off.”

“I almost did. Consider yourself lucky I didn’t shoot you at least once.”

“Who would help you find Gia? You can’t trust anyone, not even your brothers. We have no idea who was involved with all this and what game they’re running.”

“Marco and Pete helped me find Carlo. I still have to pick up Fig, Dom, and Sal.”

“What did you do with Carlo?”

“Smashed in his skull with a baseball bat.”

Sonny laughed. “You always had a good arm.”

“It doesn’t take much to swing a bat.”

“So, where do we go from here?” Sonny finished the rest of his food and set the plate in the sink. “Do you want to go after Dom and his guys or check out the church?”

“The church. Maybe it will give us a lead on where they’re keeping Gia.”

Just like that, I had my best friend back.

But could I trust him?